Occult lore
Etteilla
Direct answer
Etteilla was the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738 to 1791), a Parisian who made his living reading cards and published the first printed method of tarot divination.
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At a glance
- Also called
- jean-baptiste alliette
- Found in
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Related
- Tarot, Cartomancy, Tarot de Marseille, Tarot Reading
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Who was Etteilla?
Etteilla is the surname Alliette spelled backwards. Jean-Baptiste Alliette was a Paris tradesman who turned card reading into a profession, with printed books, paying pupils and a deck of his own. He is the first person known to have published instructions for telling fortunes with the tarot.
His method gave each card an upright and a reversed meaning and laid the cards out in set patterns, two habits that readers still keep. He accepted Court de Gébelin's claim that the tarot was an Egyptian book, calling it the Book of Thoth, and redrew and renumbered the cards to restore what he believed was their first order. Later occultists mocked him as a mere fortune teller while borrowing much of his system.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Tarot, runes, I Ching.
What sets Etteilla apart
Etteilla's mark on card reading is procedural. He was the first to print fixed meanings for every card, to give a second meaning to a card that falls upside down, and to publish layouts with named positions. He also broke with the game deck altogether: his own tarot is numbered from one to seventy-eight, opens with cards for the days of creation and the elements, and prints keywords at the top and bottom of each card. He taught by correspondence and sold lessons, which made him a target for later writers.
- Born and died: Paris, 1738 to 1791
- Real name: Jean-Baptiste Alliette; the pen name is the surname reversed
- First book: 1770, on reading the thirty-two card piquet pack
- Tarot books: issued in parts between 1783 and 1785
- His deck: about 1789; the first tarot designed for divination, not for play
Often mistaken for something else: Court de Gébelin, a scholar, published the claim that the tarot was Egyptian in 1781 and read no fortunes; Etteilla was the practitioner who turned the claim into a method and a trade.
The story behind Etteilla
His first book, in 1770, taught reading with the ordinary pack of thirty-two cards used for the game of piquet. Between 1783 and 1785 he published a work in several parts on reading the tarot, and about 1789 he issued a deck designed for the purpose, later sold as the Grand Etteilla. He founded a society of pupils to study the Book of Thoth and died in Paris in 1791. Versions of his deck stayed in print in France through the nineteenth century.
Why Etteilla matters
He marks the point where the tarot passes from a game with a legend attached to a working method of divination with rules.
How to read Etteilla
Historians of the cards cite him to date the start of tarot reading, and collectors use his name for the family of decks that follow his numbering.
Etteilla in practice: an example
A reader who notes that a card has come out upside down and softens or turns its meaning is following a practice Etteilla set down in print in the 1780s.
Where readings of Etteilla go wrong
His Egyptian history of the cards was a belief of his time and has no evidence behind it.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
Recorded here as history and lore. No rite is taught on this page.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Aliases
- etteilla tarot, jean-baptiste alliette, grand etteilla deck, who was etteilla, etteilla cartomancy
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who was Etteilla?
He was Jean-Baptiste Alliette, born in Paris in 1738, who worked as a card reader, teacher and author under his own name reversed. He died in 1791.
Did Etteilla invent tarot reading?
He is the first person known to have published a method for it and to have designed a deck for it. Whether cards were read informally before him is not recorded; the printed evidence starts in his decade.
What is the Grand Etteilla?
It is the name given to the tarot deck Etteilla issued about 1789 and to its later reprints. Its cards are renumbered, carry keywords for the upright and reversed positions, and differ in order from the standard tarot.
